Yinka Shonibare CBE was born in 1962 in London and moved to Lagos, Nigeria, at the age of three. He returned to London to study Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art and then at Goldsmiths College where he received his MFA.

Shonibare’s work explores issues of race and class through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and film. In 2004 he was nominated for the Turner prize, and awarded an MBE. In 2018 he was awarded an CBE. In September 2008, a major mid-career survey commenced at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and then toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. In 2010, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle became his first public art commission on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. The work is now permanently on display outside the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich Park, London. Shonibare was elected a Royal Academician in 2013. A permanent public installation of a Wind Sculpture at Howick Place, London, was unveiled in 2014. Further Wind Sculptures have been shown at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., in Central Park, New York and in Lagos as part of British Council UK/Nigeria 2015-16.

Shonibare’s work has been exhibited all over the world and is held in museum collections including Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Arts Council Collection, London; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, Rome and VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands.

Yinka Shonibare among artists selected for Nigeria’s Venice Biennale 2024 pavilion.